Before entering private practice, Helen was an employee of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) for 18 years. For twelve years she was an attorney at the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Most recently before entering private practice, Helen served as the FMCSA's Senior Trial Attorney in the Western United States. While employed there, Helen provided legal services to FMCSA investigators and employees in regulatory enforcement matters arising in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Her legal enforcement responsibilities also included regulatory enforcement matters arising in several U.S. Territories, such as Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Her international responsibilities included providing legal advice and counsel to agency employees handling investigations of Canadian and Mexican trucking companies operating in the United States. In her prior experience working with DOT, Helen served as an Associate Staff Instructor at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's National Training Center, located in Washington, D.C., where she helped train nearly 800 Federal and State investigators in legal theory and concepts and enforcement procedures.

As an experienced trucking attorney, Helen is fully capable of handling trucking and transportation-related matters of motor carriers, especially as they relate to the regulatory compliance requirements of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. In addition to her responsibilities as a former motor carrier lawyer for the Federal trucking agency, Helen served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for eleven years for the Eastern District of California and for eight years as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California.